Impossible Boundaries
by Panache
Summary: [SPD] There are boundaries. It is a truth upon which Dr. Kat Manx has built her career, her life. There are things which can and cannot be done. A notquite Kat Cruger story.


Disclaimer: Someone else's sandbox. I just play here because its fun.

Author's Note: I've been watching the occasional SPD episodes before attending my bar review classes in the mornings, and for some reason this idea just took hold of me. Note the use of the word occasional, therefore if I've royally screwed with continuity or cannon, I apologize. To a certain extent the theme is loosely based on the movie 'Besieged' which is one of my all time favorite not-quite-love-stories.

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There are boundaries. It is a truth upon which Dr. Kat Manx has built her career, her life. Science, the universe, life, all are constructed by, based on, boundaries. Crack open any piece of machinery, dissect any organism, and you find the same thing, limited capacity, what can and what cannot be done. Call it what you will—rules, laws, morals—at the end of the day the result is the same.

There are things which simply cannot happen.

Perhaps it is why she finds this place so comforting. Here they embrace boundaries, the order they bring to existence. There are clearly defined lines here—between civilians and soldiers, officers and cadets, right and wrong—lines which permeate everything, which bring certainty to a world that has proved itself to be far too uncertain.

"You wished to see me, Kat?"

She motions him over without looking up from her work. There are half a dozen other work stations on which he could pull up these results as she discusses them. She could put them up on the large central briefing screen, where they could work comfortably side by side. He comes over and stands behind her chair, casting a shadow over the screen.

She doesn't complain.

The results are involved, their implications subtle. A thousands tiny pieces of data being brought together in one complete picture, shift any one of them, change a parameter and the picture transforms, a fluid, undefined projection. Ten years ago, she would have oversimplified the implications, or patronizingly over-explained their tenuous nature, simply assuming that he was like so many other military officers she'd worked with, looking only for the definite. She no longer makes such mistakes.

Commander Anubis 'Doggie' Cruger is a man who understands possibilities.

In many ways he is far more comfortable with them than she. Five years ago she would have bristled as he asks about a particular assumption, taking the question as an indication that he lacked confidence in her work. Now she simply talks him through the basis and then with a quick tap of the keys, retrieves the other scenario, the one changed by that assumption. He chuckles when he realizes she's anticipated the question, and she can feel the rumble along her back, the tremor vibrating against the tips of her whiskers.

She bends a little more intently over the screen and directs his attention to another critical assumption.

He leans down to get a better view, putting a hand on the top of the console to brace himself. The posture causes him take a step forward, so that his knee moves parallel to her thigh, just a few inches apart. And now he's enveloping her, sheltering her within his presence, and her hyperawareness has little to do with the natural unease between their races.

The briefing will last for at least another half-hour, and they both know that neither will move. They will stay like this, exactly like this. Suspended, separate. It is a tenuous position, difficult to hold. One false move and he'd stumble, but she's not worried. They have held it for far longer, for hours, for days, for years. And she thinks they could hold it forever. After all, Anubis is strength. He is control.

He reaches over to point out a particular incongruity, and she moves her hand out of the way just in time.

When they've exhausted every avenue of interest, he thanks her for her time. She assures him that she's always here to help. They are rituals. Little meaningless phrases that help them hold the line, that remind them, were everything as it should be there would be no unspoken understanding that her time is always his to take, and he takes far more of it than he should. Were everything as it should be, one of them would have moved by now.

Anubis is a strong man, but even he cannot hold the line alone, so with regret she closes her eyes and calls on reinforcements.

"Isinia." The name is barely spoken, a breath, a prayer, a curse. But it is there all the same, and the effect is immediate.

He dismisses her abruptly, in her own lab, he dismisses her, just like one of his cadets, his subordinates, and then he is striding out the door and down the hall. She doesn't bother to hide her face as the pain washes over her features. He won't turn back to see it. It will be days before he returns at all.

Everyone has told him, he should let Isinia go, but Anubis is a man of possibilities. Anubis is a man of honor. There are days when she wishes he weren't. But he is, and it changes everything because if she ever took hold of him, she would lose him. If she ever took hold of him the most important parts would already be gone.

There are boundaries. They hold up the universe, science, life. One might approach them, challenge them, but they cannot be crossed. Dr. Manx closes her eyes and tries to remind herself that she's built her life on such truths.

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Isinia alive.

He can feel his world shift, as the words are spoken, can feel life becoming different, and he thinks he should be happier. But he's clung to grief for so long, that somehow he's lost the ability to think of Isinia and be happy. He's carried the weight of the pointless blind hope of her with him for years, and yet now he finds the reality heavier.

Isinia alive.

The thought haunts him, as he trudges blindly down empty halls. He's not fool enough to even try to sleep tonight, so he simply walks. He walks onward, unseeing, uncaring of the destination. He isn't going anywhere, isn't trying to find anything, except peace.

Yet he's not surprised when he finds himself in this doorway, even though he knows peace is the last thing this place will offer him tonight. Nor is he surprised to find her there, not even pretending about such trivialities as work. Instead there is only the sense of the inevitable washing over them. He had to come here, she had to be waiting for him, this has to happen now because it can never happen again. The slow crawl of resignation moves through him, as he meets her eyes and knows she feels it, too.

For once in his life, Anubis Cruger acts without thinking, without fighting the leviathan of life and circumstance. Letting himself be pulled forward by something over which he long ago lost control, he moves towards her through the shadows.

"Doggie." His name comes out in a choked gasp. A raw, needy sound that draws him up short just in time, a moment later and she wouldn't have been able to speak at all.

But she does, and it stops him, stops him because he can't fill that need, not in the way that she deserves, not in the way that a part of him truly wants to.

So they stand facing each other, so close they might be touching, except they will not. They stand doing what it seems they were destined to do, and seconds tick by.

Finally he speaks, but there is only one subject they can talk about, and neither wants to discuss it.

"You heard."

"I heard."

Isinia alive. The truth hangs between them, so that they might be facing one another from across a canyon. But he can feel her tremble with tears she will not shed, and he vibrates with the desire to hold her and the gap doesn't seem wide enough.

And still they will not touch, and still they cannot move.

And minutes tick by.

"You must be very happy."

But he's not, and she knows this, and he thinks of saying the words, but that would be cruel. But he can't lie to her, so he doesn't say anything, and there's an admission in the silence. Suddenly the impossibility of it all crashes down on him, and he knows why he isn't happy, why the truth of Isinia hurts more than the hope of her. Because he's still in mourning, only the loss is fresh, and the grief is new.

This tender beautiful possibility has died. Even as the hope of Isinia remained with him, something new had grown alongside, the possibility of one day taking Kat's hand, of closing this gap, of saying things to her no friend would ever utter and hearing her say them back. There are a hundred thousand ways he could tell her what she means. Now he will never do or say any of them.

Finally he steps away, and it is the hardest thing he has ever done, for he knows as he does, that they will never come to this point again.

As he nears the door, she takes a few quick steps forward, as though to stop him, but the moment is already past, the impossibility accepted, so he doesn't turn.

"You should get some sleep, Doctor."

He waits for her reply, but it never comes.

And to his shame, the loss is just as great, the grief just as deep.

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Comments and Criticisms always appreciated, especially since this is my foray into this particular incarnation of PR.

Panache.


End file.
